Hi everyone and I hope you've had a fantastic week so far! It's been a super busy week here at JabunAudio packing up ready for the move next week, and apart from my desk, main studio monitors and guitar amp + a couple of pedals (all of which will be packed up right after I post this), the studio is all boxed up and ready to go! This post will be the last one for a few weeks until I'm settled in the new place and have a new internet connection set up, but don't fret, this final post is gonna be a big one to leave JabunAudio3 with a bang! Tonnes of radio news to share + one final video and a round-up to conclude Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album's formal promo campaign too! Let's get straight into it!

First of all this week, today is the final day of the formal promotional campaign for Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album and to celebrate, I've uploaded a stream of the full album to YouTube and Newgrounds which you can check out below for the full 39+ minutes of uninterrupted heartfelt ska punk / pop punk that is Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams! I hope you enjoy it!

Purchase the “Hopes and Dreams” album on Bandcamp:
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/
 
Or grab the full album and complete Better Than The Book discography now when you become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Listen on Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/882416

​Next this week, a tonne more radio news to share! On Saturday morning I managed to catch the re-run of last week's The Undiscovered Sound on idobi Radio​, and "Artificial Ignorance" was featured! Thanks so much to Jeff for playing the music and you can read more about The Undiscovered Sound on their site here:

https://idobi.com/show/the-undiscovered-sound/

I'm don't think there'll be a podcast re-run of this episode, but if there is I’ll update the link on the PRESS page with the replay. Still awesome news!

Onto the next show, "Artificial Ignorance" was also featured on Channel One Radio’s The Warp Factor on Friday! Thanks so much Kirk and Craig for playing the track, and no worries at all on getting the name wrong (you're not the first)! Ironic considering the title too! You can listen to the full radio show again via the link below for many great tunes and a history of punk segment too! “Artificial Ignorance” plays in the last half hour of the show:

https://www.mixcloud.com/thewarpfactor/the-warp-factor-ultimate-punk-with-craig-cabell-6th-sept-19/

Lastly in the radio related news for this week, Button Down Radio and Tonic Ska Radio both seem to be expressing their love for Better Than The Book recently too! Thanks so much for playing the tunes and you can listen in and read more via the Facebook posts below:

Button Down Radio:
https://www.facebook.com/buttondownradio5446/posts/2401291610142662

Tonic Ska Radio:
​https://www.facebook.com/tonicskaradio/photos/a.920763794801085/1091865371024259/
https://www.facebook.com/tonicskaradio/photos/a.929833417227456/1093440354200094/

Next from the news this week, with that final full-album stream released, it feels crazy to me that after almost 5 months of pre-hype and post-promo, the formal Hopes and Dreams album promotional campaign has finally come to a close, and what a heck of an adventure it has been so far! Let's take a look back at everything the album has achieved since the first single dropped back in May:
 
Before the album was even launched, Hopes and Dreams, was featured in a number web magazines with one of the singles “(The Travelling To See Eva Song)” earning Better Than The Book its Australian FM radio premier on The Ska Show with Beefy, the #2 ska music podcast in the world! Fast forward to today, and less than 2 months after the album’s release, 5 out 10 of the tracks have been featured on radio shows and podcasts worldwide including:
 
Idobi Radio’s Fresh Picks, Spinning Thoughts, and The Undiscovered Sound shows (California)
Bobs Ska Radio (Seattle)
Channel One Radio’s The Warp Factor (UK)
Button Down Radio (UK)
Tonic Ska Radio (UK)
The Masita Ska Show with Beefy on Southern FM (Melbourne)
 
Bear in mind that many of these shows have featured and played multiple tracks from the album in multiple episodes too! On top of all the radio features, Better Than The Book has been featured and/or interviewed in a number of web magazines and music blogs too including:
 
Broken Arrow Magazine
Pete's Rock News And Views
Happy Metal Geek
Breathing The Core
The Punk Site
World Beyond Blog
 
A special mention goes out to Newgrounds too where the 2nd single “Artificial Ignorance” (which seems to be a crowd favourite across the board) earned a front page feature award too! A HUGE thanks to everyone who’s shared and played the music and helped spread the word with a round of applause for the album’s PR extraordinaire Meg who especially made many of the magazine/blog features and interviews possible! Thanks Meg! Check out all these features in full, reading interviews as well as re-listening to many of the radio show/podcast features on Better Than The Book’s press page below! I hope you enjoy them:
 
https://betterthanthebookuk.weebly.com/press.html
 
And if you’ve yet to hear the Hopes and Dreams album and see what all the fuss is about, the full album is now streaming on YouTube, SoundCloud and Newgrounds as well as available in all the usual places (iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc...) and of course on the Better Than The Book Bandcamp page! Enjoy:
 
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/album/hopes-and-dreams
 
(and of course you can listen via the video above too!)
 
Onto other news if you've not yet heard, now that the Hopes and Dreams album is out, it felt like a great time to make some updates to my Patreon page, and so I’ve revised the descriptions, goals and tier rewards (now only 3 tiers to choose from) as well as added REWARD ARCHIVE posts for the convenience of new patrons so you can grab all the past rewards for your tier (including the full Better Than The Book Discography and more) in one place when you sign up! Read all about the new updates via the Patreon post below:
 
https://www.patreon.com/posts/28931894
 
With such a big BTTB related project just finished, the newer rewards which started up again this month will focus mainly around my other musical personality Jabun (electronic / cinematic) for a little while, but don’t worry, Better Than The Book is not done yet which leads me to the final piece of news for today:
 
Last month for the first time since its conception in 2012, 4 guys (including myself) got together to jam the tunes live as a Better Than The Book band! It was just a casual living room jam, but the results were promising enough that over the past month we’ve been hard at work arranging and learning our parts for our first full band practice at the start of October! I can’t say for sure what’ll happen next if that all goes well but there is a definite possibility that after 7 years of being solely a writing/recording project, Better Than The Book may be hitting the stage! Many logistics to figure out before then first, but it’s certainly an exciting time for the project (as if the last year wasn’t exciting enough)! Crazy!
 
A friendly reminder that Better Than The Book is significantly fuelled by my Patreon page, and while recording everything myself is relatively cheap and just takes a huge time investment, taking things to the stage is a bit more of a financial challenge. If you’d like to contribute (for as little as $1 a month) head over to my Patreon homepage to read more about the various rewards you can receive, the goals for the project and pick up the full Better Than The Book discography (including some Patreon exclusives and bonuses) if you decide to sign up!
 
https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
 
If you’re unable to contribute at the moment, then no worries at all! Sharing the Bandcamp or Patreon link on social media is also a huge way to help spread the word and only takes a moment! Thanks for supporting Better Than The Book in any way you’re able to!
 
And that wraps up this post! I hope you’ve enjoyed all the amazing news this time and throughout the campaign, and I have a feeling that there’ll be more press features to come and big news to share soon (we’ll have to wait and see). If you’re itching to hear more then head over to the Better Than The Book Facebook or Twitter for the most immediate updates, or consider supporting my music on Patreon for a front row view of all the action! It's going to be a few busy weeks until the next blog post here, but I hope to be back to it again on Thursday 3rd October once I'm fully moved into the new place! Until then, a huge thank you for supporting Better Than The Book, JabunAudio and my various music projects and I hope you have a fantastic few weeks whatever you’re up to! Take care!

Hi everyone and hope you're having a great first week of September so far! It's been intensely busy over here at JabunAudio sorting various things for this week's big news: JabunAudio is moving!

That's right, after over 2 years and many projects, JabunAudio is relocating once again, and although it's a bigger move than last time, thankfully it's not as far away! Exciting things are happening in my life at the moment and so the studio will be moving with it. All the acoustic treatment has been taken down and about half of the equipment is packed away already ready for the big day later this month. I'm must say, I'm definitely nervous about having to set up a new work space and calibrate/treat a new room (this place was the best studio I've had yet), but it's also an exciting challenge which I've not had in a while!

Of course with the studio in pieces at the moment, JabunAudio has closed its doors for business until the new place is set up, and so from now until likely mid-October I'll be unable to carry out any audio work. Any communications during this period may also receive delayed responses depending on how long it takes to get the internet up and running, though feel free to message me and I'll get to any messages as and when I can. Apologies in advance for any inconvenience, and I look forward to working with you from a brand new studio location in October! 

With the big news above, the rest of the week has been spent finishing up all the current audio projects, including mixing a teaser for the new Tales of Zale episode by Hikarian Animations, as well as getting machines backed up and things packed away ready for moving. It's also been a busy week for tying up some admin loose ends with much time spent sorting the Patreon page (more on that in a moment), but there's also some exciting news, as well as another track, to share from Better Than The Book! Let's get started with that!

​Another week; another track, and this time I'm sharing the final and title track from Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album, which brings everything Better Than The Book has been about since 2012 to an intense climax to close this chapter! Prepare for some major feels, heartfelt lyrics, and references that go all the way back to One Small Step! Check it out via the YouTube video below or on SoundCloud and Newgrounds if those are your usual haunts and without further wait, here's "Hopes and Dreams":

​Purchase the “Hopes and Dreams” album on Bandcamp​:
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/
 
Or grab the full album and complete Better Than The Book discography now when you become a supporter on Patreon​:
https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

With that final track out now, you can now listen to the entire Hopes and Dreams album on YouTube, SoundCloud and Newgrounds via the playlists below too! I hope you enjoy revisiting all the music from the past few months:

YouTube: 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvRXtoSO0XcRRXiZno54nctc

SoundCloud: 
https://soundcloud.com/bttb_uk/sets/hopes-and-dreams-album

Newgrounds: 
https://www.newgrounds.com/playlists/view/4de7b9bd11545537f082fae812c1395f

Just one more thing to share next week before the formal promotional campaign for the album comes to a close, but what and incredible journey it's been over these past few months! Thank you all so much for helping spread the word about this music I've poured my heart into over the past year and supporting Better Than The Book! You folks are awesome!

Onto the next section of news for this week, lots of updates to share from Patreon! First of all, as yesterday was the first Wednesday of the month, the $1+ Patreon rewards have been sent out including my debut track as Jabun from back in 2012 "Bergamot"! It's all pretty much the same news as last week's rewards for the $5+ Hi-Fi Early Pigeons so I shan't repeat it all here, but check out the post on Patreon below for all the details:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/29106009

The bigger piece of news this week is that I have some major updates to share with you about the Patreon page itself, as with Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album (and entire discography) now out and up on Patreon, it seemed like the prefect time for some well needed revamping!

To start with, I've reassessed the reward tiers and reduced it down to 3, waving goodbye to the others as there were no subscribers to those and it was just extra work for me. So long! The 3 remaining tiers are as follows and you can read more about them on the Patreon page here.

$1 - Pigeon (Same as before)
$5 - Hi-Fi Early Pigeon (Same as the previous $5 Early Pigeon tier)
$10 - DEMOlition Pigeon (Same as before)

With these remaining tiers, I've also updated the descriptions to be bullet pointed for clear communication of the rewards and added in the explicit reward of gaining access to all past rewards for your tier too! Speaking of which if you hadn't already heard, for the convenience of patrons I’ve put together "REWARD ARCHIVE" posts so you can quickly access all rewards from October 4th 2018 to August 7th 2019 which include the full Better Than The Book discography and more! No longer will you need to sift through all the past posts manually to grab your rewards; it's all in one place now (up until August 7th 2019). Neat stuff, and feel free to read more about it in the post below:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/28928832 

With the changes to the rewards and these new convenient additions, the main Patreon description and intro video seemed a bit out of date and irrelevant so the intro video has been temporarily removed and the description updated to better reflect where things are now, rather than when I first started on Patreon a year ago. The space where the video was is now occupied by one of the press photos from the Hopes and Dreams album campaign and I hope to have a new intro video put together later this year.

Finally, with all the changes, achievements and a whole year gone past since I first set them, it felt like a great time to reassess my Patreon goals and so there are now only 3 goals for what I hope to achieve when we reach $100, $500, and $2000 a month. The accompanying descriptions I feel are more realistic to what I think I can achieve and I hope will help people to see where I aim to get with the platform and my music projects. As with the rewards tiers and description, you can find all these updates on the Patreon page here.

Next this week some more radio news for Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album! Last night Better Than The Book was apparently featured on The Undiscovered Sound on idobi Radio but I missed it because I was given the wrong air time (an hour late), so I don't even know what track was played! Many thanks to Jeff for spinning a song on the show and apparently there will be a re-run of the show on Saturday at 11am BST. In the mean time, feel free to check out more episodes of The Undiscovered Sound on the show's page on idobi radio below and hopefully I should be episode 21 whenever that comes out in podcast form:

https://idobi.com/show/the-undiscovered-sound/

Interestingly I did catch Better Than The Book's "The Hardest Part" playing on a teaser for idobi Radio's fresh picks segment when I tuned in which was pretty cool! Hopefully I'll be able to catch the intended show on Saturday! 

On a more positive note, it seems like Better Than The Book just keeps getting more and more love over on Button Down Radio, which is always nice to hear! Thanks so much for playing the tunes and check out the post below for some more ska radio fun:

https://www.facebook.com/buttondownradio5446/posts/2397008467237643?__tn__=-R#
​
Finally this week, it's the beginning of another month which means it's once again time to reflect on the previous month's goals and set some new ones for September! Here's what I had for August:

1) Create a "dump" rewards post on Patreon for all the BTTB discography and related rewards
2) Schedule Patreon rewards posts for the next 2 months
3) Have a temporal clean-up on the Patreon page in general (update information etc...)
4) Record lead and harmony vocals (+ the guitar solo?) for the mystery cover song (low priority)

​So let's start with what I didn't get done: it's been such a busy month that I've simply not had any time to pursue any leisurely recording projects, so 4) and the associated project have been put on hold until I'm in settled in the new studio and have some free time again. With the REWARD ARCHIVE posts and this weeks revamp updates on Patreon, I can safely say that 1) and 3) are sorted, and I have indeed scheduled the next 2 months of Patreon reward posts too! Overall not a bad month in terms of goals!

Onto this month, with the studio in pieces at the moment and the big move imminent, I have just a couple of goals to set for JabunAudio:

1) Finish the formal Better Than The Book - Hopes and Dreams promotional campaign
2) Get fully moved in to the new place and start getting stuff set up (I don't expect to finish setting up though)

Only 2 goals (that I'll say here), but as it's set to be a busy month, potentially without a studio or internet connection for much of it, I think those 2 goals are reasonable. The Hopes and Dreams promotional campaign is set to conclude this time next week, a day before everything needs to be packed, so hopefully I can make that (I'll still have my laptop to tie up loose ends afterwards), and with the moving date set as the 20th, 2) should hopefully be doable, though it's a hectic few weeks with other things before and after that too so we'll see how it goes. I have another couple of personal goals to sort too, and those I think will be the harder ones, but hopefully they're doable as well. Anyways, wish me luck and feel free to leave your own goals in the comments so we can keep each other accountable! Gonna be a busy month!

And that wraps up this week's news! Next week's post will be the final blog post for a few weeks, though I aim to be back and writing it again for October 3rd! I'm sure this next week will be super busy finishing off the Hopes and Dreams promotional campaign as well as packing and tying up various other loose ends, but until the next post, I hope you have a marvelous week and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio, Better Than The Book and my various projects! Take care and see you next time!